This past Friday and Saturday August 2nd and 3rd I was invited to moderate a Q&A at The Beverly Theater in Las Vegas with Greg Sestero, co-star of the cult classic The Room. For anyone who has listened to my podcast before, you know how big a fan of The Room I am, so of course I jumped at the opportunity.
The sold out 20th anniversary screenings of the film at The Beverly Theater were a blast (and yes, I sat through the film two nights in a row), and the Q&As were so much fun. Greg was totally game for conversations and questions about the film, his book “The Disaster Artist,” his own new films Miracle Valley and Forbidden Sky, and his crazy career path. I met a lot of great people at the screenings who were very appreciative of the Q&A, and along with all the live Piecing It Together shows I’ve been doing lately, it’s been great to be a part of the Vegas film community.
Today on Piecing It Together is a an edited version of night 1’s Q&A as a special episode of the podcast. Along with that I have the full unedited video versions of both nights exclusively available on the Produced by David Rosen Patreon. I’ve made them free, so you don’t even have to sign up for a paid membership to watch them. Just go follow my Patreon on the free tier and you can watch both of the night’s Q&As in full (we cover a bunch of similar ground each night but with some unique stories as well as different questions from the audience). And of course while you’re there if you want to sign up to get some of the other content available from Piecing It Together, Awesome Movie Year and my music career starting at $3, your support is greatly appreciated.
I also wanted to mention on this blog a little more of my history with The Room. For anyone who listens to my other movie podcast, Awesome Movie Year, I recounted this story when we covered The Room in the 2003 season, but I figured I’d tell you about it here too because Greg Sestero was so amazed by this himself. On July 2nd, 2004, I was at the Brenden Palms movie theater with my best friend for a film festival that I think was called the New York Film Festival, but there’s no real record of it online anywhere so I can’t find any confirmation of the name. After watching a few documentaries we were in the lobby debating if we were going to watch one more film or head out to a bar when a strange guy approached us… “You cool guys… Come see my movie” he said in a thick sort of European, sort of Cajun sounding accent. “Oh yeah, you’re a filmmaker? I’m a composer,” I replied because I was there networking, trying to meet filmmakers and get gigs. “Oh composer… I spend $2 million on my film score. Come see my movie.” He replied. We had no idea what to expect when we followed him into the theater, but I thought hey, worst case we’ll kill an extra couple hours, best case maybe this guy will hire me one day! By this point you know that that guy was Tommy Wiseau, writer/director/producer/star of The Room, and we couldn’t have imagined what followed. We sat down in a theater that was completely silent for the first 5 minutes or so. Mind you “The Room” wasn’t a thing yet. It had only had a few small screenings in LA at that point and word hadn’t gotten out about the best worst movie ever. As the first of many sex scenes started there were some scattered snickers and me and my friend were looking at each other like “what is happening?” As the film transitions to the next morning and Johnny asks Lisa “Did you like last night?” and then does that bizarre little Tommy Wiseau laugh, the whole theater erupted in laughter. From that point on it was like a valve was released and it was nonstop laughter from beginning to end (all with the film’s strange director sitting on the end of our aisle). None of the little bits and traditions that have become common place at The Room screenings existed yet… It was just nonstop laughter at the disaster that was unfolding on screen. I had to wait a year for the DVD to become available (I regularly checked online for info about its release), and it was still another year or two before the film really broke out as the cult classic that it became.
I told Greg about this when we met before Friday night’s screening and he was shocked that I was actually there. He said that screening is actually legendary because the film wasn’t even 100% done at that point, and it was almost like an unsanctioned Tommy only screening. He told everyone he was going to screen it in Las Vegas and Greg and the rest of the team “didn’t believe him.” It was literally just Tommy in his car driving to Vegas to screen it. Having been at that screening was already a very hipster-ish badge of honor I’ve always worn for being in on The Room before it became a thing, but to hear Greg’s reaction and story about not believing Tommy that the screening even happened at first, makes it all the better.
So that’s my story (what a story, Dave!) and I just wanted to share it on here to go along with the Piecing It Together interview episode and Patreon-exclusive Q&A videos. Thanks to The Beverly Theater for having me out, and thanks to Greg Sestero for an awesome couple of interviews.
Thank you for reading this post, thanks for listening and watching, and keep an eye out for more live Piecing It Together events coming up soon!